Design and Development of Novel Nutraceuticals: Current Trends and Methodologies

Over the past few years, nutraceuticals have gained substantial attention due to the health-promoting and disease-preventing functions behind their nutritional value. The global prevalence of nutraceuticals is reflected in the increasing number of commercially available nutraceuticals and their wide range of applications. Therefore, a unique opportunity emerges for their further exploration using innovative, reliable, accurate, low cost, and high hit rate methods to design and develop next generation nutraceuticals. Towards this direction, computational techniques constitute an influential trend for academic and industrial research, providing not only the chemical tools necessary for further mechanism characterization but also the starting point for the development of novel nutraceuticals. In the present review, an overview of nutraceuticals is discussed, underscoring the crucial role of chemoinformatic platforms, chemolibraries, and in silico techniques, as well as their perspectives in the development of novel nutraceuticals. This review also aims to record the latest advances and challenges in the area of nanonutraceuticals, an innovative field that capitalizes on the assets of nanotechnology for the encapsulation of bioactive components in order to improve their release profile and therapeutic efficacy.